Cops 'n Blips
by Lucillia
Summary: A simple game of Cops 'n Blips changes everything for one Alfie Bester when he gets to play a cop and the blips run for a different target. Decades later, he gets a chance to see exactly how much everything had changed for him. Sometimes the last person you ever want to meet is the you who took the road you didn't...


He'd been arguing about his upcoming role in the latest round of Cops 'n Blips when Ms. Chastain had come over to see why the group of them were gathered around doing nothing while one member of the group got madder and madder with every passing second. It had been bad enough that he'd been basically forced out of his tree, even worse that Brett had decided to play the big brother and rescue him when he'd nearly fallen from said tree, but then when he came to play the Corps approved game, it was to find that he was yet again the Blip and that someone seemed to think he'd make a fine blip.

_Let Alfie be one of the cops this time. _Ms. Chastain sent when she'd discovered what the argument was about. There was an undercurrent of _Or Else_ that went completely spoken but was heard by all, an _Or Else_ that had cowed the others into complying and letting him play as a cop for once and in the end, it was decided that everyone's big brother whether they liked it or not Brett and the bat-faced Azmun would be the blips. The game seemed to go well from there, and his mood had picked up considerably especially after they'd caught Brett and Azmun's trail.

When they caught up with them and had been moments from capturing them, Brett and Azmun had split up, and Brett had made a break for the red knob at the train station. As half the group swiftly dealt with Azmun, he hared after Brett with the rest of the group trailing behind. Brett was the fastest in their age group, but he was a close second, and all it would take would be a misstep, and he would be the one to defeat perfect Brett whom everyone else either admired or looked up to. That misstep occurred at the train station itself when Brett was nearly at the red knob that would mark him as safe, and he ended up "accidentally" turning that stumble into a fall.

_Got you. _he crowed from his position on Brett's back as the rest of the group gathered around, catching the attention of a scarred Psi-Cop who looked to be nearing retirement if he hadn't reached it already that had been waiting for the train.

"What're you kids doing?" the Psi-Cop asked them as Milla helped Brett up and Brett shrugged off her assistance, embarrassed at being helped by a girl.

"Playing Cops 'n Blips sir." he said in a tone that wasn't quite as deferential as it should have been, since he was still riding his elation over the fact that he'd caught Brett.

"And which were you?" the Psi-Cop asked, looking at him strangely.

"I was a cop!" he said proudly.

"You?! You a cop?!" the Psi-Cop exclaimed, not bothering to block his surprise which was bitter and spiky and seemed to be mixed with several other emotions including hatred for some strange reason.

"Yes sir. I plan on being one when I grow up." he said nervously, wanting that horrible feeling that seemed to be yet not be directed at him to go away.

"Like they'd ever let you be a cop." the Psi-Cop said coldly, finally clamping down on whatever the hell he was feeling, apparently having realized that he'd been blooping bigtime.

"Why would you say something like that?" big brother Brett asked, yet again coming to the rescue like he always did even when the person he was rescuing didn't want it. "Alfie will make a great cop!"

"Oh, _Alfie_ is it?" the Psi-Cop said, internally laughing in a manner that wasn't pleasant. "You mean that they haven't told you?"

"Told us what?" he asked, wondering what the hell was going on or even if he should get one of the others to run for another adult since he'd never seen a Psi-Cop act like this. John Trakker was never mean to kids.

"It would seem that someone thought it would be funny to try to make you one of us, even after all _they _did. I can only imagine what would happen down the line if they actually let you become a cop despite how many of us your parents killed, my wife included." the Psi-Cop said bitterly, the image of the Mother and the Father flashing when he'd said "_they" _and "your parents".

"What are you talking about?" Azmun asked, sounding, looking, and feeling confused.

"Alfie's name is just as much Alfie as mine is George Washington." the Psi-Cop sneered. "The brat you call Alfie is really named Stephen Dexter. I should know since I was on the team that brought that little thing that is practically the spitting image of its mother in after Walters ditched it."

For a good long time, he had regarded that day as the day that ruined his life. It was the day that had pretty much confirmed what his dormmates had been trying to ignore, and that was that he didn't belong and hadn't ever belonged. When he'd been forced to sleep in the hallway by the other boys who hadn't wanted the son of a pair of blips in their room since he might contaminate them or worse on the night following the Psi-Cop's revelation, he'd become bound and determined to prove he belonged right up until the day he'd done the stupidest thing he'd ever done in his entire life.

He probably would have gone on trying to prove to everybody that he belonged to the Corps just as much as they did if not moreso despite the fact that he'd pretty much hated everyone in it - especially the bastards who'd put him in the Business track in the Minor Academy - if someone hadn't put a bunch of his old Cadre Prime dormmates up to inviting him on one of their hiking trips when he was fifteen. Back when he was fifteen, he'd still been determined to become a Psi-Cop in spite of everything, and had constantly gone down to the small West End MetaPol station to bother the cops there. The only one of them who'd bothered to indulge him had been Van Ark who would let him take a look at the hunt lists. He probably would have liked the man if he hadn't had a tendency to take a rather perverse amusement in telling him how this that or the other rogue had been captured recently.

When he'd been in the line to purchase the tickets for the ride back to Teeptown after the disastrous hike on which a normal had attacked him and he'd completely lost it and beat the shit out of the boy who was several times his size and everyone walked on eggshells around him in case he lost it again, he had recognized the woman who'd been standing in line in front of him from the hunt lists he'd obsessively poured over. It was in that moment he'd gotten the oh so brilliant idea to prove to everyone that he was a loyal member of the Corps and not a blip by capturing an actual rogue telepath. Never mind that she was twice his age and reputedly traveling with a career criminal who was more than twice his size and had spent years on the run.

Suffice to say, things had not gone well, and that he would have been in a great deal more trouble when he got home if a Cop named Bey who'd killed his desire to become a Psi-Cop by taking him along on a raid hadn't taken him under his wing. Six decades later, he could still remember that raid as if it had taken place the day before. In his nightmares he could see the half-starved blips futilely struggling against the Hounds while a particularly vicious officer dragged the mundane couple that had been sheltering them out of their home in front of their screaming children and shot them on the front lawn.

_This is the new breed of Psi-Cop _Bey had sent as he watched, sickness roiling in his stomach as the cooked smell of the PPG burns reached him. _Since they're phasing out the old instructors and replacing them with the most vicious and corrupt of the field agents and forcing the old guard to retire, this is what you'd be working with if you became a Psi-Cop. Be glad you have been spared this fate._

When he returned to classes at the Minor Academy, he'd buckled down on his business studies despite the fact that he'd thought only a short time before that a P-12 would be completely wasted as a busybody. While he wasn't about to run away from the Corps any time soon, he stopped trying to prove that he was loyal and that he belonged. After seeing the senseless slaughter of a couple who had only wanted to help members of his own kind, he wasn't entirely sure if he did want to belong anymore if that was what it meant to be in the Corps. Suffice to say, he'd quit bothering the Cops at the West End station, not that they cared that he had done so.

In due time he'd graduated from the Minor Academy and then the Major Academy and had been sent out into the workforce where the comment he'd received most often from both fellow busybodies and clients alike was "Excuse me, but you're a P What?!". If it weren't for the normals who didn't all hate telepaths and were willing to have a drink or two after business was concluded or willing to lay wagers on things that were entirely down to chance, or the occasional colleague who didn't mind who his parents were since he was an "okay guy", he probably would have hated his job since it was incredibly repetitive and didn't challenge him in the slightest.

One day when he was still in his early twenties, he'd been called and informed that the Corps had found a wife for him. He'd been somewhat surprised that they'd wanted him to continue his line considering...But, then again, a P-12 is a P-12. After he'd met the incredibly beautiful but sad Elizabeth Montoya, he'd wondered if there had been a mistake of some sort. He soon gathered why the Corps had set the two of them up however after he'd learned that the former Psi-Cop trainee had tried to run and had damn near succeeded too.

In the beginning, things had been exceedingly awkward between the two of them but love of a sort eventually blossomed, especially after she had seen that he was willing to do everything he could to make her happy but let her go since she'd be killed if she ran a second time. They'd ended up staying together for far longer than most telepathic couples, and had several children who had given them a large number of grandchildren. It wasn't a perfect marriage - still wasn't in fact - but it was a reasonably good one even though they constantly worried about their children and later grandchildren when they'd grown old enough to become Psi-Cops especially since everyone knew who their parents/grandparents were.

After a long career, he'd come to Babylon 5 as something of a working retirement after Talia Winters had resigned her position following an incident with a rogue telepath that people in the know were trying to keep a lid on. Fortunately, he had been allowed to bring his wife with him so long as she wore a tracker, since she had always wanted to travel. The people aboard the station were interesting, and reasonably friendly after they'd gotten over the fact that he'd "replaced" Talia. In fact, the Chief of Security had actually invited him back to his place to watch old Daffy Duck vids on more than one occasion.

Of course, that could have been because no-one else would take him up on his offer...

If any extra food or supplies he and his wife had eventually found their way to a certain section of Down Below to be used by a certain group of Lurkers well, they had absolutely no idea how they got there and there was no way those poorly trained youngsters could prove they did if they tried.

In the end though, despite his wife's dreams of traveling to anywhere and everywhere, it had been him who had traveled farther than anyone else. He'd been heading to a meeting with the rather enigmatic Ambassador Kosh when he'd stepped through a doorway and found himself looking at himself. There was really no way to explain it. He knew that the man he was looking at was himself, yet not himself before he'd even gotten a proper look at the man's face.

If there was a way to see one's own mind as he saw another's, he'd say the other him's mind had the same foundation but had taken off in a darker direction until his heart and soul were consumed and there was only darkness and emptiness left. Unlike him who'd had a couple of tropical vacations during his life and taken up gardening for a while as a method of stress relief, the man's pallor suggested a lifetime either in space or in an enclosed colony that didn't get much sun. The laugh lines that he'd ended up developing and left despite the fact that he could have had them removed since the wife liked them and they put his clients somewhat at ease weren't there either. Instead of wearing his standard business attire, this man who wore a version of his face wore the black uniform of a Psi-Cop. Looking more closely at the man, he could see that his left fist was clenched around something that made him angry and brought him pain at the same time. He couldn't begin to guess at what it was however.

_Who are you?! _the other him asked, just as surprised by seeing him as he was by seeing him.

_Stephen Dexter._ he sent back, knowing that this Psi-Cop version of him who had spent his life working with the sort who had dragged that mundane couple out of their home and slaughtered them in front of their children wouldn't appreciate the reminder, but finding himself unable to resist. There needed to be something to separate the two of them, and a name was a good a thing as any.

His blocks were immediately battered by an incredible sense of anger and hatred as his counterpart's fist nearly unclenched before clenching itself tighter than before around whatever he was hiding which clearly wasn't his emotions. The man looked like he wanted to kill him for a while before reason seemed to take over and he became calculating. Since his counterpart's blocks had snapped back up the instant after his anger had been brought under control, he didn't entirely know what the man was thinking since he was shaped by a different set of life experiences that caused his thoughts to follow along different tracks at times, but he could guess at some of it.

_Come._ His counterpart said, turning away from him and striding down the corridor towards Captain Sheridan office.

Not wanting to tempt fate any further in case this wasn't some sort of mental attack or bizarre dream or something, he had followed. Captain Sheridan who'd been speaking with Commander Ivanova when the two of them arrived wasn't happy to see him, either of him. Nor was he happy to be following his counterpart's orders and calling for Michael.

As he watched this Alfred Bester who had grown up to be everything he had wanted to be when he was young, this Alfred Bester who had grown up to be "The Best" interact with the station's command crew, he found himself remembering what Director Vacit had told him when he was six when it came to being happy and being the best, and how one tended to preclude the other. Seeing this cold, empty, and angry Bester who seemed to want to make the world suffer more than he did, the one thing he wanted most was to go back to his quiet life where he was - now that he thought about it - happy.

His life wasn't the best life out there, but he had friends rather than subordinates, family who was happy to see him every time he returned to Earth - even though some had cut off all contact either for the sake of their careers or to prove they belonged like he'd tried to do when he was young - and a home aboard a station where the command staff weren't constantly thinking about where they'd like to send him and what they'd like to do with him before they sent him there. His counterpart on the other hand had none of that.


End file.
